The writing is on the wall: Sooner or later, most cops will be wearing cameras.

Across the U.S., from Oakland to Cincinnati to New Orleans, cities are outfitting their police officers with miniature body cameras to record dealings with the public.

Fort Worth started testing 50 cameras last year, just placed an order for 145 more and says it hopes to have 500 on the streets in the next two years. Richland Hills rolled out its cameras in April, joining Frisco, Little Elm and other North Texas communities.

Now, in the wake of the disputed shooting of a mentally ill man by a Dallas police officer, Chief David Brown says Dallas is considering them, too.

Supporters of the body cams cite evidence that they’re good for police and the public. Law enforcement agencies like them because they cut down on complaints and protect officers from unsupported allegations of misconduct. Civil libertarians like them because they’ve been shown to reduce the use of force and can serve as evidence when abuses do occur.

“Everyone behaves better when the cameras are on,” says Scott Greenwood, a constitutional lawyer known for his work on police misconduct.

Given this trend, the question inevitably becomes not will this technology be adopted, but rather how will it be used?

For departments navigating that debate, the key is to maintain public trust. They can’t simply ignore legitimate privacy or accountability concerns. The mere idea of police cameras can seem unsettling and ripe for abuse.

Greenwood and Tom Streicher, former chief of the Cincinnati Police Department, have drafted recommendations for agencies. And in October, the American Civil Liberties Union — not usually thought of as supporting more surveillance by authorities — published a report in favor of the cameras, while raising specific concerns.

The consensus from these experts is clear: First, we need to know that cameras are capturing a complete, unaltered version of events.

Greenwood believes departments should require officers to record the entirety of every interaction with citizens; officers should have no discretion over what or when to record, and there should be consequences for not recording.

Similarly, officers shouldn’t be able to edit footage. Forensic audits must be available to determine whether recordings have been modified.

Jay Stanley, author of the ACLU report, agrees with Greenwood, but cautions that there’s such a thing as too much video, as well. He says cameras should not be used as tools of mass surveillance — for example, by recording faces at a protest and uploading them to a searchable database.

Privacy is a second area of concern. Our actions out in the world are public, but what happens when we interact with police in our own homes, spaces traditionally protected by the Fourth Amendment? Absent clear policies to the contrary, officers could seek to film anywhere they are legally allowed to be — including our living rooms. Might we want to permit a resident to refuse recording under certain circumstances?

Retention must also be addressed. For how long must footage be kept after it’s taken? The ACLU errs on the side of shorter retention — several weeks, perhaps — but it suggests that both officers and the subjects of recordings should be able to flag material to be held longer. It also recommends that footage automatically be retained when it involves use of force, detention or arrest, or when complaints have been registered.

Finally, videos and their metadata should be easily accessible by the subjects of recordings and defense attorneys, without having to go through bureaucratic open-records requests, which departments may resist. At the other end of the spectrum, policies should address when footage can be released to members of the press and general public.

“Often, agencies roll out surveillance technology and don’t consider how to use it until an issue arises,” says Amie Stepanovich, director of the Electronic Surveillance Project at the Electronic Privacy Information Center. At that point, the response may seem arbitrary or be too little, too late.

If police body cameras are indeed the future, departments need well-conceived policies — developed in consultation with the public — in place now to prevent accountability problems down the line.

Because the only thing creepier than Big Brother watching is knowing he can do whatever he wants.

Attorney Jordan Fletcher is a Fellow in Global Journalism at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs. Follow him on Twitter at @fletchjordan.

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